new SPU2 plugin from zerofrog. It is the most stable SPU2 plugin. Also has a time-scaling feature which slows down sound when the frame rate is too low (instead of hearing popping sounds). The time-scaling feature works best under Windows, but is also implemented...

Real Time Clock (RTC) has been recently implimented by Refraction. PCSX2 now takes the current system time from your OS and inserts the value into PCSX2 upon launch, from that point onwards the emulated RTC counts independently from the OS.

So? you wonder, well apart from the BIOS now displaying the correct time and date - you would think this is a minor addition to PCSX2, nothing more than an addition to authenticity? Well you're in for a suprise!

It struck me when talking to Refraction over a cup of coffee, Metal Gear Solid 3 uses system time for various fun aspects of the game - Such as being able to kill The End from old age if you set the RTC 1 year ahead after saving during the battle.

Metal Gear Solid 3 had never done anything under PCSX2, so with the RTC addition to PCSX2 in mind, I popped the disc into my drive, and eureka it booted!! This however was only the beginning of an epic saga between Zerofrog and the Konami programmers!

Zerofrog has spent days wrestling with Knonami's ability to push the PS2 hardware to it's limits by making zeroGS KOSMOS push the limits of GPU's, Metal Gear Solid 3 certainly loves it's post processing! Not only has he managed to get the game looking ..well from absolute garbage to gorgeous, he's also managed to stop Snake from slipping through holes in the universe instantly.

The game still has issues, Snake still manages to find holes in the universe (falls through geometry), and he still likes to get stuck inside trees, rocks or just teleport off the edge of the world (the video demonstrates the latter beautifully!). The game also still suffers from visual issues, such as missing textures and the specular lighting overlay being drawn wrong, hopefully by the time the next incarnation of PCSX2 comes out, these issues will be mostly resolved.

So to celebrate this game going from nothing to ingame and the challenges it threw at us, we're releasing a video and 63 shots! Not all 63 are here though, General Emulation run by our betatester General Plot has 31 exclusive shots, so head there for the rest!

All this maybe great news (especially for MGS fans), but there is more, you may have noticed the nothing status games have been decressing steadily and the playable count is going up on our on site compatibility list, including some rather nice games...and there is a new plugin coming up...but you'll have to wait! Wink

Now enjoy the video which you can grab from here (it's a torrent so please seed, and check out our other torrented videos here)

Click on the thumbnails below to see larger versions of each image, and head over to General Emulation for the rest!

Game is extremely stable, all movies work without freezing, and sound is beautiful. I would call it playable if ingame 3d graphics weren't as slow and ZeroGS KOSMOS didn't consume my entire computer resources. If even there existed a fast enough processor (and I assure you, there doesn't), the wall outlet wouldn't be able to supply enough power to run the game in real time (this will be fixed by next official release). It should be noted here that ZeroGS was named after the character in this game due to this very reason.

This is the first dvd9 (dual layer) game to work for pcsx2. Coincidentally, it is also the first dvd9 game to be released on the ps2.

Well linux users, we promised we'd have you back and here is the living breathing proof!

Along with this release you have a couple of new plugins exclusively!

ZeroPAD - New pad plugin based off Twinpad, PADWinkeyb and SSSPSX Pad.

ZeroGS OGL - An OpenGL conversion of ZeroGS. No more GSSoft for you Wink

You also have available a 32bit and 64bit build for your pleasure, we do spoil you sometimes! Take note the 64bit version is far from finished!
The next release will be much quicker than the current implimentation... head over to the download section to grab it.

WINDOWS USERS:- I have some bad news for you, there will be no 0.9.3 for windows, BUT Before you go crying to mummy that weve been picking on you, you will see 0.9.4 very soon, we have some 64bit bugs in windows to sort out, along with some excellent fixes for games such as Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas so it will be worth the wait.

As a consolation, if you are in to Dreamcast emulation, the long awaited nullDC has just been released, you can grab it here

Just to excite you a little more, here are a few shots ive taken with some of the new fixes for 0.9.4. Enjoy

Work has been silently progressing over in camp PCSX2. So whats going on?

Well for starters PCSX2 linux. Development for PCSX2 linux has gone extremely well, so well infact that several games already run on the developers machine and soon we betatesters shall be entering mainstream testing phase.

With the advent of PCSX2 linux comes zeroGS OGL, a full port of the current D3D zeroGS by zerofrog. Whilst this OGL port is in terms of visual compatibility is extremely close to the D3D build, it has several speed related issues to 'iron out', of course these issues will be fixed in the future, and more information shall be given out soon. There will also be a 'suprise' with zeroGS OGL, but that is for zerofrog to announce in the future!

PCSX2 is also getting a full blown x64 build! This is some exceedingly hefty work, with x64 recompilers and core having to be written. Such a port will be able to take full advantage of x64 compatible CPUs under an appropriate OS (Windows x64 / Linux x64), this should offer significant gains in speed, however the work is preliminary and we can't offer direct examples or comparisons yet..!

To all those who have donated, thank you very much! Your donations have helped us buy new hardware to fully develop the linux ports and use 64bit in a stable environment.

Of course with all this porting and rather complex set of additions doesn't leave huge amounts of room for the team to work on other aspects, but we have not forgotten the primary reason for this emulator - getting PS2 games to run on your PC, and compatibility thus has not taken a sidestep, below are shots of Soul Calibur II running under a recent beta of PCSX2:

This release brings several important changes to PCSX2, enhancing compatibility and adding several new aspects to the emulator.

ADMA has been added to PCSX2, most (if not all) game videos will playback audio, many games now have their music and speech effects.

Counter fixes stopping games hitting long pause syndrome, or crashing.

Enhanced MTGS / DC stability, great for those with Dual Core CPUs.

IPU improvements, more game videos will now run.

VIF fixes, allowing for many games to run or look better.

VUrec fixes, improving ingame graphics when under VU recompilation

Also included with this release is the new Patch Browser and Patch Finder, the patch browser, allows you to search memory with the tools and functions you would be used to with a cheat searcher.

The Patch Browser will allow you to enable and disable parts of the patch during gameplay, eg; enabling Infinite Lives etc!

HOWEVER!! - These features are not completed yet, enumerator's and other features are not present, and the patch browser lacks functionality! You can still use the patch finder, and an example XML file with notes is included with this release (in the root dir of PCSX2), and the new format XML files can be used by PCSX2!

PCSX2 0.9.2 also comes with a new zeroGS plugin, which increases graphical support for several games and fixes some of the bugs found in the previous version(s).

We're going to save ourselves some hassle next! We're aware many people want to play Final Fantasy X on PCSX2, as you maybe aware the game is now fully playable, however we would like to make two very important notes:

PEOPS CDVD plugin must be used!

MTGS can cause some crashes, they are rare, but if the game crashes, switch to single core mode for awhile!

ZeroGS KOSMOS 0.95 written by Zerofrog is out! This is the plugin of choice for people using graphics cards supporting Pixel Shader 2.0 or 3.0.

ZeroGS KOSMOS has greatly improved over its previous release, now it is significantly faster, an example would be 'Final Fantasy XII', which is now 3x faster!

Less graphical flaws are present with many games looking absolutely stunning, and even the least capable PS2.0 supporting cards, such as the nVidia 5xxx series will show little to no loss in quality.

ZeroGS KOSMOS also supports the MTGS (Multi Threaded GS) feature of PCSX2, this allows users with Dual Core or Multi CPU machines to get even more speed out of PCSX2, however until the next release of PCSX2, the current MTGS issues will persist.

ZeroGS KOSMOS supports various new features including video recording, Bilinear Filtering, 2 and 4xAA, wireframe mode and more!

Note that the newest DirectX Runtime is required to run ZeroGS KOSMOS.

MTGS (Multi Threaded GS) has recently become much more stable thanks to zerofrog and his recent improvements to zeroGS (a GS plugin for PCSX2). MTGS allows for people with Dual Core CPU's to run PCSX2 at significantly improved speeds by putting the graphics side of PCSX2 onto a seperate core.

zeroGS itself has also gone through a major overhaul, making it significantly faster, even without the use of MTGS, so the Single Core crowd will also see a speed boost via this plugin!

zeroGS offers more features in the up coming release, with improved AA, wireframe mode, video recording, bilinear filtering and pre-defined resolutions to choose from.

So whats the catch? Well zeroGS requires Pixel Shader 2.0, so you need a graphics card capable of this shader model (I recommend the GeForce 6600GT for budget users).

The other catch is somewhat obvious, you will need a Dual Core CPU to support MTGS mode, eg; AMD X2's, Opterons and of course the new Conroe.

So when does this new zeroGS come out? Well for now no ETA, and please don't be nagging us about it! Rolleyes